Short Summary

The foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey met informally for two-and-a-half hours at the Turkish Embassy in Rome on Saturday (17 May) to discuss Cyprus and their two countries' territorial rights in the Aegean Sea.

Description

The foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey met informally for two-and-a-half hours at the Turkish Embassy in Rome on Saturday (17 May) to discuss Cyprus and their two countries' territorial rights in the Aegean Sea.

The two men - Mr. Dimitrios Bitsios of Greece and Mr. Ihsan Sabri Caglayangil of Turkey - held their first official session of talks the following day, Sunday. Their discussions are intended to prepare the way for the Greek and Turkish summit meeting to be held later this month.

It was the first high-level meeting between leaders of the two countries in six months, and is seen as a serious attempt to cool the political temperature over the problems that divide them.

Mr. Caglayangil told newsmen afterwards that they had agreed not to issue any statement until the talks had been completed on Sunday. The ministers' delegations split into two commissions - one to discuss claims to oil exploration in the Aegean, and the other to deal with "bilateral problems", which presumably meant Cyprus.